


Hour IX

by NortheasternWind



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game), Tales of Legendia, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, POV Outsider, mild eye horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NortheasternWind/pseuds/NortheasternWind
Summary: Fëanor generally finds that birds mean well and people should try to listen to them more than they do, so when a flock of white pigeons accost him in London he obediently stops to hear what they have to say.“Montmerenzi,” the doves say. “Naenia.”
Kudos: 4





	Hour IX

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU almost a decade old some friends and I have all added to that has thus accumulated an absolutely absurd amount of lore. If you're here for Cultist Simulator, it's just an Outsider POV fic of the Ghoul DLC bad ending and the POV character doesn't actually matter. If you're here for the Silmarillion or Tales of Legendia, I am so sorry, but you can find some AU info in the end notes if you really want to know.
> 
> If not though, that's okay! Just consider this an archival post for my own purposes. But if you do read, I hope you enjoy it.

Fëanor generally finds that birds mean well and people should try to listen to them more than they do, so when a flock of white pigeons accost him in London he obediently stops to hear what they have to say.

They haven’t actually accosted him, of course. They’re just standing there, perched on utility lines and stone eaves, watching him. But somehow their cooing seems to seek his attention, so he stops and looks up at them expectantly and hopes no one nearby takes issue with it.

“Montmerenzi,” the doves say. “Naenia.”

He can’t very well tell them he doesn’t know what that is— he is in the middle of a crowded London street, after all— so he simply smiles and nods a little and goes on his way.

Once he has a free moment, off to the Internet he goes: the first thing Google tries to tell him is that Montmorency is a type of cherry, and though he has only ever heard the word spoken (by birds!) he knows that this is not what he’s looking for. Montmorency, Montmerenci— it takes a little filtering, but once he focuses on London he finds something, and sets out to see what he can do for the little birds.

The Montmerenzi-McDonald Gallery, he finds, is a set of various artworks and other miscellany collected by a cartographer named Alistair Montmerenzi, displayed after his death on the condition that nothing within would ever be exposed to sunlight. Later Fëanor will consider this a glaring red flag, but in the moment it makes perfect sense: sunlight brings harm to many paintings and other materials, and he knows well the desire of mortals to preserve the things that predate them.

He pays the token fee and reads the rules— no photography whatsoever, phone to be kept in a locker and retrieved on his way out— and ascends the stone steps, wandering the halls of the gallery. The artifacts have impressive variety: chalices, shears, anatomical drawings, lanterns, paintings, a statue of a mole that he finds delightfully unusual. But the one that catches his eye is a painting of a dark-skinned woman, hair and eyes the color of snow, standing before a tomb overgrown with star jasmine.

‘Miss Naenia - Jonas B. Munch, 1811,” the plaque beneath it reads.

“So you are Naenia,” Fëanor tells it.

It does not speak back to him. It is only a painting. But after he leaves that day, he seems to remember what she has said.

She had been surprised, but pleased to see him. She does not often get visitors, she said, and few of her visitors are in the mood for conversation. He finds himself telling her of the doves that led him to her, and though she cannot nod she seems to understand what this means.

At least that makes one of them.

Miss Naenia isn’t very talkative— probably because she is a painting— but still Fëanor returns day after day, trying to find what it is the birds wish for him to do. He does not speak to her of anything terribly personal, for he is at heart a private man, but when he mentions the restless energy that has plagued him all his life the eyes of the painting seem almost kind. Naenia reminds him that all things pass: good things, perhaps, but bad things as well, and that there will come a time when he does not feel so fickle and uncertain.

It is only a painting. But Fëanor’s heart does feel lighter when he leaves that day.

Eventually, finally, Miss Naenia begins to confide in him in return. She mentions one day, reluctantly, that a friend of hers has not visited for some time, and would he please check on her to make sure she is okay?

Fëanor’s readiness to trust a painting is rather less than his readiness to trust birds, but if the pigeons have led him to her then this must be what they wish him to do. He agrees, and later when he retrieves his phone he has received a text with an address, and a painting.

Not a photo of a painting. An image file, painted, of a woman. Julia Sinombre.

The “address” is simply the intersection of two streets, and Fëanor nearly returns to Miss Naenia to ask her to be more specific. But when he wanders by the next day, he sees why she wasn’t: the intersection is under construction, and there— one of the workers—

“Miss Sinombre?” he calls out, and the woman who looks up is the very image of the painting in his phone.

She gestures to her coworkers and jogs over, removing her gloves to wipe the sweat from her brow. She is strong, Fëanor sees. Stronger than this world generally allows women to be. He tries not to think of his wife.

“Afternoon,” she greets pleasantly. “Can I help you with something?”

She might be sick, Fëanor thinks. Her lips are blackened. Her tongue is swollen in her mouth, affecting her words.

“I think we have a mutual friend,” he tells her. “She says you haven’t visited in a while, and she was worried.”

For just a moment, something in her eyes sharpens. She is not fast enough to hide it again before Fëanor notices.

“Oh, I’ve been pretty busy lately. This stuff doesn’t pay all that well, so I’ve been kind of neglecting my social life in general.”

Fëanor digs out his wallet. If it were a mere question of money he doubts the doves would have gotten involved, but he is far from starving and so takes a hundred pounds and offers it to her. “An unfortunately common occurrence, I hear.”

Julia hesitates before taking the money. “Ah— I didn’t hear your name?”

“Fëanor. Miss Naenia sent me.”

The tension visibly lifts from Julia’s shoulders at the sound of that name. “Oh! Yeah, I haven’t been to see her lately. How is she?”

Fëanor isn’t certain how to answer this, considering Naenia is a painting. “Same as ever, I assume. We only just met some days ago.”

Julia nods, smiling. “That sounds like her. If you see her before I do, tell her I’m doing okay and I’ll visit soon, alright? And thanks so much for the money, it’s really a big help.”

“I will,” Fëanor promises. “Good luck.”

This strange business with the painting has rather consumed everything else he had intended to do while in London, so he runs his errands and returns to Naenia the next day. He mentions the money, and the work, and the strange condition of Julia’s lips, and leaves feeling less reassured than he had hoped.

He remembers Naenia asking that he find her again, that she must not be eating. Naenia asked him to tell her to please eat: she must not allow herself to go hungry. Fëanor mentioned the money again, but even though Naenia’s teeth aren’t visible in the painting he recalls thinking them sharp and dangerous.

She is not eating, Naenia had said. Please tell her to eat.

Julia isn’t at work the next time Fëanor visits, so he drops by to ask Naenia if she knows where Julia lives. Naenia had seemed hesitant, had said that she didn’t want to just give out Julia’s address, but had given him a different address for what she claimed was Julia’s “other job.”

(Later, Fëanor will again think that this should have made him more suspicious, but in that moment it had made just as much sense as the sunlight. If Julia was struggling financially, of course she had more than one job.)

The address he receives in his texts leads him to a cozy little back alley filled with dusty businesses and empty apartments. No wonder Julia isn't making any money, he thinks— but as he approaches his ears catch shouting, pounding footsteps, slamming doors, and he abandons those thoughts and breaks into a run.

A crowd gathers around a little bookshop with a closed sign hanging on the door, speaking in frantic voices and gesticulating wildly, but all this ceases as Fëanor hurries to join them.

“What happened?” he demands, before he feels it.

(Sickly but powerful, and growing stronger.)

He does not wait for their answer, kicking his way through the front door and rushing through the shelves of the shop.

“Julia?!” he calls. ”Miss Sinombre?!”

He skids to a halt in the back room where the strange feeling emanates from, and nearly vomits on the spot at the sight of what he finds.

It is a great man-sized (or woman-sized) tumor, a mountain of lumpy flesh with teeth and hair growing in odd places, a crown of thorns growing out of its top, snaking out and growing over what is almost certainly a collection of corpses, and that is all Fëanor can discern before his own eyes begin to burn.

He screeches and covers his eyes, only barely stopping himself from clawing them out. Somehow he knows: merely by looking at it he has put himself in grave danger, and every moment he feels the thing coming closer.

He tries not to use magic while on Earth. There seems to be an understanding among supernatural creatures: Earth is for the mortals, for the mundane and the powerless, and no one wishes to be the one who breaks that facade. But a sense of urgency pounds in Fëanor’s chest: somehow he knows that he has no choice.

Most magic he knows requires a catalyst. Some require sight. He reaches for the first school of magic he can think of that asks for neither, and the flames of Laurentius and Quelana and Izalith and his own soul burst to life in his hands.

He cannot see his opponent, so he hurls his flame over every surface and in every direction he can, focusing on the otherworldly screeches when he hears them and changing directions when he can't. He hurls a fireball in front of him, then sets everything to the left and right aflame, and by the time he can no longer feel the sickening presence of whatever he has found Fëanor realizes that he has once again trapped himself in a kiln of his own making.

He is perfectly capable of escaping this time, technically, but instead he resigns himself to burning and burning and collapses to his knees to wait.

...Somewhere, in the distance, a pigeon is cooing.

He ignores it at first, thinking it the constant birdsong of the city, but a cold breeze sweeps by and the cooing becomes louder. Fëanor stumbles to his feet and blindly follows, pushing his way past burning bookshelves and desks, until he hears the ring of the entrance bell above him and collapses onto the pavement outside.

“Is it gone?!” a voice asks, accompanied by a supporting arm around his.

“I think so,” Fëanor says. “I can’t see,” he clarifies next, because he doesn’t know how obvious it is.

“Should we take him to the hospital?” another voice further away asks.

“We definitely should not be here when the fire department shows up.”

“My eyes hurt,” Fëanor says, and blacks out.

Awaken is probably the wrong word for what Fëanor does.

He comes to awareness in a dark pit, surrounded by grotesque lumps of flesh reaching for him with hungry fingers. With a startled yell he summons his pyromancies again and lashes out, flame licking over the tumors— to little effect.

It reaches. It grows. Fëanor groans and turns to run.

It turns out he is, actually, in a pit of some sort: he quickly runs into a wall of some kind of stone, sheer but not impossible to scale— not for an elf— and after a quick glance behind him Fëanor reaches up to climb. It’s the quickest he’s ever scaled anything: the flesh seems faster down here in the dark, much more energetic and eager, and when Fëanor finally pulls himself up onto a ledge leading to ascending stairs he doesn’t even stop to look before breaking into a run.

Up, up, up. An elf does not tire easily, but an elf can become discouraged, and Fëanor can feel the growth at his heels for what must be an eternity. Up and up and up; the darkness doesn’t seem as heavy, but it is no easier to see through, and the change is so slow he is certain he has been running all night before he even notices. Up and up, and at the top of the next flight of stairs is the first other person he has seen since waking up here: a dark-skinned woman, with snow-colored hair.

Naenia unlocks the door and opens it, letting light stream into the pit, and Fëanor launches himself through without stopping to thank her.

“Dear one?” a blessed, familiar voice asks.

Fëanor groans theatrically. It seems he has actually, truly woken up this time, for he is lying in a bed, and… ah, something is covering his eyes. He reaches up with a hand, and someone grasps it in theirs— soft, warm, familiar.

“How did you find me?” Fëanor asks. His voice is weaker than it should be, but not so weak that it alarms him. He must be past the worst of it.

“I was summoned,” Grune says. “How do you feel?”

Fëanor squeezes her hand, then stops to think. It’s usually important to answer Grune honestly.

“Tired, as though I have run quite a distance.” Which he suspects he has. “My eyes no longer hurt.”

“They should be fine,” Grune reassures him. “The heat of your soul burned the spores out. I suspect that’s why you were chosen.”

Fëanor quickly decides to let the subject of spores lie. “I was just doing the birds a favor.”

“I know,” Grune says soothingly. “It was not fair of them to ask.”

“Did they call you here? You said you were summoned.”

Grune pauses before answering. Fëanor wishes he could see her face. “In a way. Have you heard of the Mansus?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. It is a house of gods that dwell in the dreams of some Earths, including this one it seems.”

Fëanor sighs. The Valar. Of course.

“They are fickle and capricious,” Grune agrees. “And there is an entire Bureau dedicated to keeping them a secret, for though they offer power it comes at a price.”

Does it not always? “And which Vala have I run afoul of today?”

“The Ivory Dove,” Grune says. “The one from whom no more can be taken. The Elegiast.”

The Elegiast. Somehow the room seems to grow colder at the sound of that name.

“He summoned you here?”

“Yes. And he has explained everything.”

Fëanor pauses. “Will you tell me?”

“If you ask. But Fëanor, my dear one, I beg you: if you desire to know more of the Mansus, please seek that knowledge from me, and no other. I will not stop you, but—”

“I know the dangers of meddling with gods,” Fëanor says. “Tell me what happened.”

Grune sets Fëanor’s hand down on the bed, but does not let go. “The painting, Naenia.”

“Is she really only a painting?”

“Yes and no. She existed before the painting, but that seems to be her favorite skin. Naenia is a servant of the Elegiast, the god of death, loss, remembrance and winter. She had asked another human to do her a favor, but had not heard back from her in some time.”

“Julia Sinombre,” Fëanor supplies.

“Yes. Naenia taught Julia to harness some of the power of the Mansus in order to accomplish what the Elegiast asked of her. But that power comes with a cost— one Julia did not seem to understand until it was too late to correct.”

 _She must eat_ , Naenia had said.

“So I was sent to tell her?”

“So it seems. But she had already reached the point of no return.”

Fëanor sighs. “I was too slow.”

“If the Elegiast wanted you to be faster he should have explained himself,” Grune says, with a little of that sharp edge in her voice. “You did exactly as you should have, dear Fëanor. Nothing that has happened is your fault.”

All he wanted was to help the birds. Fëanor lets his head roll to the side, imagining a window he might have looked out of there. Not that the view would be anything to write home about: he assumes he is still in London.

“That thing I saw was Julia?” he asks. He shouldn’t, but it pays to confirm some things.

Grune’s voice seems sad. “Yes. And no. A different god of the Mansus had set his spores inside her. What you saw could no longer be called Julia.”

“I destroyed it.”

“You didn’t. You did admirably, sending it back after its first escape in millenia, but you have not destroyed it.”

Fëanor thinks of Morgoth, and of Tinúviel’s threats. “Does it still have Julia?”

“No,” Grune says. “Naenia asked me to tell you. The Elegiast plucked her from within the Growth: she is safe with Him in death, now.”

Fëanor sighs again. “At least there’s that.”

“You did well, Fëanor.”

“I feel rather as though I have been dragged along behind someone else, and merely done the best I could. But thank you.”

The room falls silent for a little while. Fëanor catalogues his wounds: much lesser than he would have expected, having escaped from a burning building. His mind, too, seems to have escaped the experience none the worse for wear. He thinks back to the burning bookshop, but though he had been blind he remembers only falling snow.

“Tricked again,” he grumbles.

Grune rubs his hand. “Yes. But that was not the Elegiast’s intention. He is not the kindest god of the Mansus, but He is never cruel, and never takes except what is offered to Him freely.”

“I hope He appreciates it.”

“He will,” Grune says, with the kind of certainty that tells Fëanor he probably shouldn’t ask.

“What was Julia doing for Naenia?” he asks instead.

He can almost feel Grune shaking her head. “I’ve taken care of it. It is not something you can or should finish.”

She knows him well. “Will you stop her from seeking another in Julia’s place?”

“I don’t believe I can. But Julia made it halfway; perhaps she has eased her successor’s journey.”

“What was she doing?”

Grune hesitates a moment, but apparently assures herself that Fëanor is only curious. “She was painting with lost colors, murdered alongside gods that the Elegiast will not allow others to forget.”

“...The god of remembrance.”

“Yes. I don’t know that I would call it an honor, but what the Elegiast asked of her was a singularly important task to Him. I shall see that He treats her with the respect she deserves.”

Fëanor wonders what kind of person Julia was. If she had friends or family that would miss her now that she is gone. But that knowledge is not his right. “If you see Julia, tell her that I shall remember her.”

“That is enough,” Grune assures him gently. “Leave the rest to me now and be at ease— for my sake.”

“Do I have a choice?” Fëanor asks sardonically.

“Your eyes have probably recovered by now, if you wish to leave, but the hospital staff will not risk removing the bandages for some days yet.”

There is an unspoken offer there, but Fëanor sighs, again. “I think I had better not draw any more attention to myself.”

Grune releases his hand. “Would you like me to stay with you?”

“Please.”

“I thought you might,” she says with a smile in her voice. “I’ve brought you a book, if you don’t mind listening.”

“You always think of everything, Grune.”

“I try my best. Now…”

Elves do not sleep. Fëanor spends the rest of the night listening to Grune’s voice, and the distant cooing of doves.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, AU notes:
> 
> -Fëanor is the single most powerful elf in Tolkien's legendarium. In this AU he was yeeted out of the afterlife and cursed to never be recognized after his death and went around making the First Age an Everyone Lives AU. Resigned to not being recognized by his children and accepting that he will be universally despised forever, he left the world never to return, and eventually ends up on Earth.
> 
> -Grune is a goddess of hope and time from Tales of Legendia. She is one half of a pair, wherein her counterpart tries to end suffering by retconning people out of existence and Grune tries to stop her by convincing people that life is worth living. She and Fëanor have become familiar over the years, because Fëanor has many mental health issues orz. This is actually where the AU started! :D
> 
> -Quelana, Laurentius, Izalith and pyromancies are from Dark Souls. Yes, this is that kind of AU. The rest of the lore is irrelevant for this fic XD
> 
> -Frankly, everything you need to know about Cultist Simulator is in the fic itself, LMAO. yes, the whole game is like this. The player character's default name is JN Sinombre, which is why Julia's last name is so goofy.
> 
> Originally Grune and Naenia's conversation was going to be on-screen, but I figured that was too much of an information dump when Fëanor doesn't understand half of what's being said, so it's just a lil fic about a week-long adventure ending in mommy visiting baby boy in the hospital. ♥ I absolutely take Notices About Typos so feel free, LAUGHS.


End file.
